Website Name

Year Published

Title

URL

Access Date

March 03, 2015

Publisher

A+E Networks

On January 31, 1988, in San Diego, California, Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins becomes the first African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, scoring four of Washington’s five touchdowns in an upset 42-10 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII.

Denver was favored to win the game, and they started strong, as star quarterback John Elway threw a 56-yard touchdown pass to Ricky Nattiel on the team’s first play from scrimmage. Williams injured his knee shortly thereafter and was replaced for two plays by Jay Schroeder. By the beginning of the second quarter, the Broncos were ahead 10-0. All that changed, however, when Williams and the Redskins began to obliterate the Denver defense, scoring 35 points in the quarter, the most points ever for a single postseason quarter in National Football League (NFL) history.

The scoring onslaught began with Williams’ 80-yard touchdown pass to Ricky Sanders, which tied a record for longest pass in a Super Bowl game. Williams scored three more touchdowns in the period, finding Gary Clark with a 27-yard pass, hitting Sanders again for 50 yards and finishing with an eight-yard toss to Clint Didier. For the fifth score of the period, Williams handed off to the rookie running back Timmy Smith and Smith headed along the right sideline for 58 yards into the end zone. Sanders and Smith set their own Super Bowl records that day: Sanders for receiving (193 yards) and Smith for rushing (204 yards).

Denver never recovered, as the Redskins scored once more in the second half to put the final score at 42-10. Though he downplayed the race issue of his legacy, telling ABC’s Keith Jackson in a post-game interview that he “didn’t come to the Washington Redskins as a black quarterback,” Williams made history in more ways than one in Super Bowl XXII. His four touchdowns in the first half tied the Super Bowl then-record for most touchdowns thrown in an entire game. Also in the first half, he passed for 306 yards, just 25 short of the Super Bowl record for an entire game. Williams broke the record–set by Joe Montana in Super Bowl XIX–in the third period.

Also on this day

U.S. President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II.
Five months earlier, the United States had lost its nuclear supremacy when the...

On this day in 1752, future Patriot Gouverneur Morris is born to the wealthy Morris family of New York.
Gouverneur Morris began his political activities in support of the Patriot cause as a representative to New York’s Provincial Congress beginning in 1775, seven years after his graduation from King’s College (now...

On this day in 2007, Cars.com names its top 10 most memorable TV cars; a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am named KITT from the show “Knight Rider” tops the list.
Pontiac, a division of General Motors (GM), began making fast, sporty muscle cars in the 1960s, including the GTO, which launched in...

On this day in 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in America.The amendmentread, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
When the Civil War began, President Abraham Lincoln’s professed goal was the...

The Soviet Union’s first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opens in Moscow. Throngs of people line up to pay the equivalent of several days’ wages for Big Macs, shakes, and french fries. The appearance of this notorious symbol of capitalism and the enthusiastic reception it received from the Russian people...

Los Angeles prosecutors announce that they will retry teacher Raymond Buckey, who was accused of molesting children at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. The McMartin trials had already taken over six years and cost more than $13.5 million without a single guilty verdict resulting from 208 charges. However,...

On this day in 1953, flooding in the North Sea kills more than 1,500 people in the Netherlands and destroys 1 million acres of farmland. The storm also caused death and destruction in Great Britain and Belgium.
The storm began in the North Atlantic and moved slowly toward the British Isles...

At Westminster in London, Guy Fawkes, a chief conspirator in the plot to blow up the British Parliament building, jumps to his death moments before his execution for treason.On the eve of a general parliamentary session scheduled for November 5, 1605, Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, found...

On January 31, 1917, Germany announces the renewal of unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sited in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just...

On this day in 1968, as part of the Tet Offensive, a squad of Viet Cong guerillas attacks the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The soldiers seized the embassy and held it for six hours until an assault force of U.S. paratroopers landed by helicopter on the building’s roof and routed...

Apollo 14, piloted by astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr., Edgar D. Mitchell, and Stuart A. Roosa, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a manned mission to the moon. On February 5, after suffering some initial problems in docking the lunar and command modules, Shepard and Mitchell descended to...

On this day in 1974, the pioneering movie producer Samuel Goldwyn dies in his sleep at the age of 91, at his home in Los Angeles.
Born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Goldwyn left Poland when he was 11 for England and later New York, where he took a menial job in...

Novelist Norman Mailer is born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on this day in 1923. Mailer grew up in Brooklyn and attended Harvard. During World War II, he joined the army, then studied at the Sorbonne, where he wrote his first novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), based on...

Phillip Glass, a vital force in postmodern music, is born in Baltimore, Maryland, on this day in 1937.
The description most often used to describe the music of American composer Phillip Glass is “minimalist.” While the entirety of Glass’s body of work does not fit within the category, he is easily...

Zane Grey, author of Riders of the Purple Sage, is born in Zanesville, Ohio.
The son of a successful dentist, Grey enjoyed a happy and solid upper-middle-class childhood, marred only by occasional fistfights with boys who teased him about his unusual first name, Pearl. (Grey later replaced it with his...

On this day in 1995, President Bill Clinton authorizes a $20 billion loan to Mexico. As the value of the peso hit an all-time low, Clinton sidestepped Congress’ rejection of an earlier $50 billion loan proposal and exercised his executive power. Claiming that he was acting in the national interest...

As part of the Tet Offensive, Viet Cong soldiers attack the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. A 19-man suicide squad seized the U.S. Embassy and held it for six hours until an assault force of U.S. paratroopers landed by helicopter on the building’s roof and routed them.
The offensive was launched on...

In a communiqué charging President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger with “unilaterally” divulging the substance of the secret talks, creating the impasse at the secret meeting, and distorting the facts, North Vietnam publishes the nine-point plan they submitted during the secret talks.
Since August 1969, talks between Kissinger and North Vietnamese...

On this day in 1917, Germany announces the renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic as German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sighted in war-zone waters. When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged...

On this day, Pvt. Eddie Slovik becomes the first American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for desertion-and the only one who suffered such a fate during World War II.
Pvt. Eddie Slovik was a draftee. Originally classified 4-F because of a prison record (grand theft auto), he was...